The First 90 Days for a New Partner Leader

Congratulations!

You’ve accepted an offer to become the Partner Executive/VP/Director/Manager at a new firm.

How do you make sure that you are successful in the new role?

According to research from the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), about 50% to 70% of executives fail within 18 months of taking on a role, regardless of whether they were an external hire or promoted from within.?

In this article, we will guide you on how to make an impact at your new company within the first 90 days of employment.?

Why 90 days, you ask?

In most companies, the first 90 days of employment is seen as your “probation period”, where the actions you take will largely determine whether you succeed or fail.?

Let’s jump in.

Before Start Date (Interview Process)

The interview process is one of the best opportunities for you to gather as much information on the role as possible. After all, this may be the company that you stay at for many years to come, propelling your career to the next level, or be the company that becomes a gap in your career due to misalignment of culture and role fit.?

As a partner leader, you want to ask yourself the following questions before deciding the company you want to move forward with:

• Do I want to join a mature partner organization, or one that is in its infancy stages? (grow vs build)
• How does the partner page, if any, look on the company’s website? (i.e., is it a page that they invest in, or just another landing page?)
• Who does the partner organization report up to?
• Will you have the ability to hire your own team/restructure existing team?
• What are the company’s views on partners? (i.e., executive buy in)
• What, if any, are the partners that the company currently works with?
• What challenges is the partner organization facing today?
• What is the company culture like?
• What is the current tech stack used in the partner organization, if any??
• What is the budget the partner team has??

Asking these questions during the interview process will be critical in drafting your 30-60-90 day plan before you start the position.

As a leader, you want to hit the ground running, so wasting your first few weeks on the job asking the questions above could put you at a disadvantage and show unpreparedness on your part.

First 30 Days - Listen & Learn

The first 30 days on the job can be frightening. Whether you are a lower level staff coming out of college, or a new C-suite level executive, stepping into an executive role for the first time in your career. The confidence that you thought you had in your past role, immediately begins to question itself in the uncharted territories of the new company.

According to Michael D. Watkins, author of The First 90 Days, here are 5 tips to avoid the "Transition Trap" of moving into a new role:

• Sticking to what you know - You believe you will be successful in the new role by doing the same things you did in your previous role
• Falling prey to "action imperative" - You feel as if you need to take action, and you try too hard, too early to put your own stamp on the organization.
• Setting unrealistic expectations - You don't negotiate your mandate or establish clear, achievable objections.
• Attempting to do too much - You rush off in all directions, launching multiple initiatives in the hope that some will pay off.
• Neglecting Horizontal Relationships - You spend too much time focused on vertical relationships, and not enough on peers and other stakeholders.

Okay, now that you know what not to do in your first 30 days, you're probably wondering what you should be doing.

Here you go.

• Learn your product/software and how your sellers demonstrate the value
• Target quick wins! These could be no-brainer fixes that the company has yet to adopt given its lack of experience of resistance in the past.
• Meet with your team and get to know them at a deeper level. These folks are now looking up to you for leadership. We should never assume what happened in the past at the company you joined. Who knows, you could be the reason why they choose to stay if they've had a negative experience with the company in the past. Make a positive impact!
• Meet with sellers at all levels (Account Executives, Regional and Area Sales Directors, and Sales Executives) to understand their view of partners (if they currently exist in your organization), or understand where partners can fit into the sales process.
• If partners currently exist at the organization, meet with them and understand their experience with your company, both positive and negative. Of course, the negative feedback here is critical to get a feeling of how your organization operates from an outsider's perspective.
• Set goals. Go big! These goals should be specific and include a deadline. For example, "I want to have conversations with 10 prospective partners by the end of my 90 days." Another one can be, "I want to source 1 million dollars in pipeline through partners in my first year."
• Tap your relevant network of partners and let them know of your transition and that you will be in touch for a potential partnership. I would keep the conversation light until you know how to demonstrate the value to said partner(s).
• Meet with the operations team to understand how partner selling motions have been tracked and do a deep dive on KPI's and other metrics that have been tracked against partners.
• Wrap up your first 30 days with updating the 30-60-90 day plan you had coming in based on your findings and conversations you've had. Make sure you meet with 1-2 key stakeholders to review the plan with. The stakeholders are there to make sure you are considering things like company culture, obstacles to expect with your plan, and any other factors to consider when going about implementing change at your specific company.

First 60 Days - Implementation and Communication

• Going into your 60 day mark, you should have a clear idea of the issues/areas of improvement in your organization and a plan of how to attack these areas.
• You should now be shifting your focus to creating a detailed plan on how to implement the change based on your findings.
• Based on your conversations, make a list of obstacles that you will encounter with any given goal. This is what separates great leaders from good leaders. Understanding the culture and perspective of individuals that will be affected with the change will make your approach a lot more calculated.
• Identify behavior changes that are needed to push your initiatives and culture goals forward. This will be a longer term play, but as a leader, you have an impact on culture, make sure you are implementing this from day 1.
• Begin to open up conversations with prospective partners to come onboard. Now that you have the value proposition drafted, you can trial the pitch to partners that you have prior relationships with. This will allow you to receive honest feedback with folks you trust.
• Continue holding 1:1's with key stakeholders and your direct team to develop those relationships and receive direct feedback on your first 60 days.

The graph below from Michael D. Watkins shows the value consumption to value produced timeline through your first 6 months of employment. You'll notice the pivotal moment occurs between the 60 and 90 day mark!

First 90 Days - Execute, Execute, Execute

• At this stage, you should have multiple goals/strategies in the implementation phase.
• Begin to track the KPI's that are relevant to your partner organization. Examples of KPI's can include partner attach rate, partner sourced opportunities, partner influenced opportunities, and much more.
• Begin to take on the leadership role not only to your direct team, but cross-departmentally through the relationships you've built.
• Announcing the positive organizational change you drove through a modern approach. For example, posting a video on your #team Slack channel on your daily outdoor walk.
• At this stage, you're aware of the organization of your team and begin to hire folks on your team, as well as restructure your existing team (i.e., promote where needed, fire where needed).
• Celebrate your wins with your team. Don't forget to make it fun for not only yourself, but your team! Change is not taken lightly, so make it easier on the folks that are impacted by the change.

There is so much more that can be said in your first 90 days, but I hope the above provides you with a structure on what you should consider. Partner leaders are unique in that you are not only developing change on the inside of your organization, but also driving change externally through recruiting and developing relationships with prospective and existing partners.

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